Desktop beast

So it's time my first machine is replaced, the design is almost complete with just a few things to finalise on the Z axis but parts for the finalised areas are starting to roll in. I've gone for a much more substantial design, Hiwin HGR20's on all axis, gantry features extrusion from Vallder, twin nuts on all C5 leadscrews and concrete in all hollow spaces for that extra strength and dampening. Still well away from the electrical side but either verging on delta for the drive system or hybrid stepper/servos.

A few renders of the design as it's been developing with inspiration from ZeeFlyBoy on his wonderful El Beast design.

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This is where we are up to as of today, the rails finally arrived thanks to Fred at BST Automation for his usual super service and delivery in two days! Very happy with how its turning out and its certainly one heavy lump of money!
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Great to have a new build to follow Rob!

I'll be particularly interested in how well that Vallder Gantry profile works out, although it's rather expensive.
I imagine that if the linear rails are nicely parallel and co-planer, it should make that part of the build a doddle?

https://vallder.com/en/c/alu-profile...-200x96-detail

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Originally Posted by AndyGuid

Great to have a new build to follow Rob!

I'll be particularly interested in how well that Vallder Gantry profile works out, although it's rather expensive.
I imagine that if the linear rails are nicely parallel and co-planer, it should make that part of the build a doddle?

https://vallder.com/en/c/alu-profile...-200x96-detail

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The Vallder stuff was recommended to me by some other builders and they rave about it, it takes 6 M12 bolts either side and fits the 20mm rails and screw superbly. Real easy to fill with the concrete, they where super easy to do business with too. I'd totally recommend them, the quality of it is really good.

Now just waiting on the t nuts and other parts before I can start the aligning of the rails.

Welcome to the forum!

Following along also, on first sight I did think "oh the webbing on that looks a bit thin for this", then I read the post and viewed the last image :) certainly looks well made...

Edit: Seen the website dont need an answer to this question.
The M12 is nice, is it the correct hole size for tapping or just close enough, Vallder is a new one to me so will be off to their website in a mo, do they design this profile for this specific application with regards to everything fitting nicely (rails, bearings etc) or ?

Are you making the plates yourself or do you have help with those?

Concrete
What type and mix are you using, standard Portland type isn't really up to the job you know, may be able to advise you here if you don't know why?

Ooo El Beast is a personal fav over here to :applouse:

Edit: Also if not to late etc, it is usually done that the linear rails for the Z Axis would be installed on the Spindle plate, with the bearings being mounted to the gantry in a fixed position, making the distance from the bearing to cutter tip a variable distance rather than a fixed distance?

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Originally Posted by Lee Roberts

Welcome to the forum!

Following along also, on first sight I did think "oh the webbing on that looks a bit thin for this", then I read the post and viewed the last image :) certainly looks well made...

Edit: Seen the website dont need an answer to this question.
The M12 is nice, is it the correct hole size for tapping or just close enough, Vallder is a new one to me so will be off to their website in a mo, do they design this profile for this specific application with regards to everything fitting nicely (rails, bearings etc) or ?

Are you making the plates yourself or do you have help with those?

Concrete
What type and mix are you using, standard Portland type isn't really up to the job you know, may be able to advise you here if you don't know why?

Ooo El Beast is a personal fav over here to :applouse:

Edit: Also if not to late etc, it is usually done that the linear rails for the Z Axis would be installed on the Spindle plate, with the bearings being mounted to the gantry in a fixed position, making the distance from the bearing to cutter tip a variable distance rather than a fixed distance?

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Hey Lee

Yeah the vallder stuff is specifically for such application on gantries, they do have an X axis in production apparently but not yet released. So this type utilises 20mm rails and will take upto HG20 series carriages with 10mm t nuts.

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Ignore the M12 comment they're for my L 90 series extrusion which incidentally is M14 I got mixed up, the gantry extrusion takes M10.
https://www.matara.com/product/alumi...inium-profile/

The rest of the plates are being machined on my other that's being replaced by this one I made years ago, the build of this one is on here somewhere. You can see how substantially made the extrusion is and size.

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The concrete is mainly a dampening agent for harmonic reduction as the span and construction of this extrusion hasn't got that much deflection, I did consider the expanding epoxy based concrete but when factoring in the shipping and price/kg it was not worth it.

The Z axis I've gone through two iterations and had so many people having their own input, this is the first one that was based on Zee's design a little but when looking at the deflection it proved to be poor and such went back to one I've settled on in the renders above. I'm able to get full travel with maximum travel with both as the travel is only 80mm for this design and I tend to only do plate work and not anything mounted in vices.

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Yeah it's a shame Zee never carried on with his posts, enjoyed following his mad ideas.

Rob

Use epoxy granite instead of concrete maybe? Bulk epoxy isn't too expensive from some vendors. And do you have any figures for the stiffness/moments of inertia of that Vallder profile please? Looks like it does a neat job, but I'm going to need something seriously rigid for my next build....

Not much has happened since the last update, the rest of the extrusions finally came in and started with machining some mock up parts to ensure fit and functionality, found a few small issues thankfully here and now corrected them such as hole sizes incorrect and clearance.

Made a decision on the motors and went for Delta B3's so looking forward to having these and the super performance they will bring along with the Mesa 7I96S card on linuxcnc. May yet further change the remaining ball screws out for DFU as they as SFU to match the performance of the others.

Limit switches I've gone for sick sensors which use fibre optic cables instead of mechanical switches meaning I can get a much more compact design on the Z and Y where currently I do not have that option of space. https://www.sick.com/be/en/fiber-opt...f_Type:Product

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Rob very nice. What is the cost of the sensors? Have you used Linuxcnc before? Not sure but I think you may need lcnc 2.9 with the mesa7i96s

What part of Manchester are you in?

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Originally Posted by Clive S

Rob very nice. What is the cost of the sensors? Have you used Linuxcnc before? Not sure but I think you may need lcnc 2.9 with the mesa7i96s

What part of Manchester are you in?

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The sensors I've got substantially cheaper from a friend who has no need for them anymore but are new, buying brand new each sensor itself is £140 https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/fibre...ensors/2131736 but you will need a 4 pin cable and then the fibre cable also on top, the reading part is only 6mm so they're super compact.

First time with linuxcnc but others have checked and its compatible they say, glad to be getting away from mach 3 and its phantom problems it keeps giving me.

Salford side of Greater Manchester

After some pondering and some calculations I've made a change to the gantry as the current design wasn't ideal with the moment of the spindle to the gantry carriages, this new design reduces such and also looks kinda funky.

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The majority of material has come in now, just the bed to order from Alimex.
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Made another change to the gantry side pieces as I somehow ordered them 20mm less in width, no biggy just annoying that I now have 20mm of stick out further on the spindle. The sick sensors arrived from a friend in Netherlands and also kindly supplied some tooling plate along with it that was scrap to him.

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Started also making the smaller parts as I wait on some mist coolant setup so I can then begin on the larger plates. Ballscrew support mount for the Z axis and also the gantry servo motor mount machined.

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The fiber sensors look real cool, any progress on those? How do you interface those with the control system?

Input/export wise electrically into them they use a 4pin cable although only 3 of those are needed. VCC, 0V and signal just like any sensor mainly but the fibre side is a twin fibre cable, output LED and return LED which push fit into the ports on the side of the sensor. The fibre cables can be trimmed to length using the provided single use cutters. Adjusting them is done via the led panels on top where you can adjust all sorts of parameters and modes, we're trying to at the moment figure out if we can have them working as max and min limits but its looking like it may just be a single parameter use.

Here's a rough setup of the cables connected, you can see the receiving end of the fibre optics shining on the red croc clip.

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The builds moving on quite fast now I've started with the actual machining of parts, if you haven't already try DLC coated tooling as it leaves an absolutely amazing mirror finish.

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A dry fit of the parts to check fit and things, counterbores are a little tight as they're right on the lower limit of tolerance so a few need some re-work and boring a little larger by 0.1mm.

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Once the other tooling arrives this week I can then start on the large pieces for the gantry sides and framework end pieces.

Made quite significant progress this week with machining more components.

Both gantry sides are mostly complete, each has chamfer ops on the rear side so they will be flipped and located into a jig from the negative shape of them for ease of locating.
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The spacer blocks are all finished, these extend out from the carriages to clear the frame and also act as a method for the gantry to be trammed so they are independent, on the other side of the spacer blocks are the ballscrew mounts which you can see have bolts at the bottom of the spacer.
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The mechanism of the cam you can see here, an offset of 0.5mm when rotated 180 degrees gives me around 2-3 mm of travel at the top of the gantry so there is plenty there with very fine adjustment capability.
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The final top plate where the motor mount is to be bolted and also yet machined is completed minus the rear operations to create the counterbores and chamfers.
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A few design changes also, mostly to break up the horrible flat surfaces on the end pieces with a more showing off textural look to them. These will be pocket cut to ensure there is some lovely helical tool marks that are consistent instead of adaptive where you will otherwise lose them as it drags the tool back over.
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The bed has arrived thanks to Metalex and Alimex, a superb company if you haven't already dealt with them as they sorted out a damaged delivery no problem and had a new one out on delivery within a few days. They are also significantly cheaper than a certain warehouse.

Thanks for the heads up for Metalex/Alimex, I'll give them a try next time I need some plate, it'll be interesting to see how their prices compare to Smiths. How accurate was their cutting BTW?

If anything its slightly oversize on length by .5mm so no complaints. 1000x600x12 tooling plate cost me £195.5 with £35 delivery on a pallet.

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Amazing price for the plate!
Your build is looking really good, will follow this closely.

Thankyou, there's a lot more been done since the last post. I've not been doing much as there doesn't seem to be much activity on here anymore. We have a discord where we talk and share some mad ideas if you are interested.

Got through the machining on both end pieces which turned out quite nice, bullnose mill and .5 chamfer on the tops.
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Those parts came out really good!
Yes Rob, I'd like to get into the discord, I'm addicted to DIY CNC Lol

How can i?

Rob there is plenty of activity on this forum, taking members away to a discord server isn't exactly going to help anything is it?

Please stop inviting people away from this forum, as a community we have been running MYCNCUK for over 10 years and spent allot of time and effort building this forum up to what it is now, i agree it could do with some tweaks and is some what out dated on the forum software side of things and i have plans for that.

If its not for you anymore that's one thing.

We talk over call and share livestreams on there, nothing at all about taking people away its a completely different aspect to what's not on here, we're all still on here. I guess I'll cease posting then.

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Originally Posted by RobC

We talk over call and share livestreams on there, nothing at all about taking people away its a completely different aspect to what's not on here, we're all still on here. Your only comment has been a negative one on this whole post about my build which says a lot. I guess I'll cease posting then.

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Rob I don't want to get in to a long drawn out debate over this, I am fully aware of the discord platform and nothing it has to offer cant be implemented here. You offered an invite in another post and I didnt have a problem with that either, I try and support everyone, however this time you've also said that there "doesn't seem to be much activity on here anymore", this is untrue and in my opinion slightly Fear/Scaremongering, the forum dose go through "quite periods" typically in the summer months but it has always been that way, overall the growth of the community here has always been linear.

During the covid years or so we had quite a big rise in uptake/activity, what data are you basing your comments on?

Rob, again that isn't true or fair mate, I was the second or third person to join in and comment on your build log here, I've also been following along as you have updated it, admittedly I haven't had anything to add or contribute, likewise your build log has had interest from 50 plus other members so far...

What do you mean by says allot ?
As the creator of the forum, of course one of my biggest concern's is the strength of its heartbeat, surly if you too have a concern over the activity of the forum, you can see where taking people off the forum to be active on an obscure discord server is harmful to the community if not done correctly, how do you conclude that my request is of a negative nature ?

Now I use the word obscure for a couple of reasons, one reason is because I haven't received an invite and no one has come to me with concerns for the well being of the community, so I can only assume this hasn't been setup under the MYCNCUK flag/banner in order to support this existing community, if it has please except my apologies and thank you for doing that. All I have seen is your invites going out to people and the other member who posted something about a CNCZone one he had set up...

As I say, I've been left in the dark so I'm a bit unsure and you've used the word "we" or words like "we have" a few times, so at this point I don't really know what to conclude, please inform me ??

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Originally Posted by RobC

I guess I'll cease posting then.

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Why what's wrong?, please don't cease to post on the forum/community, I'm sure we can work this out together, as an end that really would be a negative thing.

One of my biggest issue with Discord servers, in this hobby and many others (extreme overclocking PC parts, motorcycles, firearms, RC trucks, etc, etc), is where is all that knowledge going to be a decade from now? Right now I can look back at old forum posts and while maybe the pictures don't work, the knowledge is still clear and available. It pains me to see so much useful stuff will be lost to the ether, as this info will be locked behind an artificial wall, inaccessible. As such, I try to avoid Discord where I can and would recommend as many of you do the same as possible.

The build looks great! I'm truly intrigued by the extrusion and just might have to order a chunk.

Thank you!

Hi Rob
This is another great build, I missed it initiially as i had stopped my usual daily check on the forum as it had gone a bit quiet, however i would appreciate it if you would continue posting. KingZeusCLE has a valid point. Please consider it.
Regards
Mike

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Originally Posted by RobC

I guess I'll cease posting then.

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Or you could just be a good sport, it's seriously bad form inviting people away from a forum, easily as bad, or worse than taking discussions which could help everyone to PM.